We all have parenting moments we regret. The other day I was hard on my son and felt very badly about my behaviour. Even though we may have the tools to do so, calming down when our kids are melting down, sometimes for the most ridiculous reasons, can feel impossible to do.
From the moment your baby bump starts to show until your teenagers shouts, “I hate you!” as she runs away from the car, others are likely to provide unsolicited advice or comment on your parenting strategies.
It is well documented that the benefits of regular reading are profound. Studies have shown that reading improves everything from a person’s language, academic, speech, communication, and writing skills to reducing stress, improving concentration, expanding vocabulary, and allowing us to be lost in another world. Reading is relaxing entertainment that grows brains!
Helping your child through a freak-out that has been caused by a compromised state includes juggling between finding a way to reduce the compromise and handling the melt-down. Being "compromised" means when a child is upset due to hunger, thirst, sleepiness, lack of rest, or overstimulation.
The trick is to identify what is compromising the child and sneak in a solution to that weakened state, while at the same time not activating a power struggle.
I am routinely asked for specific parenting resources that cover the wide range of experiences parents can have. In order to make it easier to find these resources, I created a list of Facebook pages to share as needed.
I recommend pages that are current with research, tell stories that help us to be better parents, and provide concrete, useful parenting strategies. If one of your favourite pages is not on this list, I’d love to know about it—please put a link to it in the comments below.
As more parents re-enter the workforce fulltime after having babies, families are hiring nannies in response to an increase in the cost of childcare and decrease in the number of daycare spaces available, particularly in larger cities.
A significant percentage of these nannies are foreign workers, often from the Philippines, who leave their own children, homes, and husbands to come take care of families in North America.
It has been ten years since children's singer/songwriter Raffi spent time in a recording studio. Thankfully, for parents and their children, the release of Raffi’s new album, called Love Bug, happened this July.
As more parents return to work within a year or two of the birth of the children, and daycare spaces become scarce, many families have turned to employing a nanny.
Like any relationship, the one between parents and their employed nanny can have its ups and downs. Here are my suggestions for creating a positive relationship with your nanny, which will support positive development in your children.
It is easy to feel that our children are selfish or trying to hurt us when they are little. Young children can be quite aggressive! Did you know that two-year-olds are actually the most violent beings on earth?
It is helpful to know that children aren’t throwing, hitting or shouting at us because they are trying to hurt or manipulate us, they are doing so because they are overwhelmed with emotion and lack a brain functioning called, “having mixed feelings.”
I was listening to a mother tell me how much of a “jerk” her five-year-old was. She explained that he was “out to get her,” and “trying to make her life miserable.” With a deep sigh, she told me she didn’t want to be with her son, which made her very sad. “I mean, I love him, but I can’t stand him right now.”
A family vacation is an excellent and important time to improve the connection with your children. Use the time away to solidify the secure attachment your child has with you, and repair any relationship rifts that may have occurred.
Parents can grow a strong, positive relationship with their children (which helps reduce defiance!) by continually attuning to them. This means being able to be with your children in a way that causes them to really feel understood, heard and important—that who they are, and what they do matters to you.
Children have a strong need to feel significant and to belong. When parents feed that need, children can put their energy into discovery, playing and learning instead of trying to get your attention.
Have you ever felt so frustrated with your kids that you want to scream?
Do you sometimes flip into a rage so fast you can’t catch yourself before doing something that hurts your kids?
That intense feeling that surges through us, hijacking our thoughts and commandeering our emotions and behaviour is likely caused by the triggering of a negative core belief.
Parents laugh when I joke that my children (not I) decided I was going to become a parenting educator. I was quite happy helping clients with their trauma recovery work, and then I had kids.
To my great surprise, having children brought out the worst in me (at first). I expected parenting to be more joyful than it actually was, but my reality was that I spent a lot of time crying when my children were born.
Big, wild, emotional reactions from children can be cause by a few different conditions. Sometimes the child feels fear, anger or sadness and needs to release that or sometimes the child has learned that freaking out works (that she will get what she wants if she blows up.)
I discovered this post on Arlene Dickinson’s Facebook page. As is common with this type of remark, the comments were divided between women (I’d say 95% of the commenters were women) saying, “I agree!” and “You have no right to judge others—stop it!”
Many children crawl into bed, stare at their parents and say, “I’m not tired.” I’ve heard stories of kids ripping around their bedroom at nighttime, having a hard time winding down to sleep.
There are things parents can do to help create the best conditions for sleeping.
Here are seven suggestions to inviting sweet dreams:
1. Turn ALL screens off at least an hour before bedtime.
I was reading a recent article in the National Post written by Barbara Kay called Send your kid to school by himself, and came across the term “physical literacy” for the first time:
I believe that being able to calm ourselves in the throes of emotional intensity is one of the most valuable parenting skills to develop.
The wild behaviour that can happen when our rage hijacks us can seriously damage the relationship with our children, grow negative core beliefs in their minds, and inadvertently teach our kids to react in the same manner when they, too, get taken over by big feelings. If you haven’t heard of the term negative core beliefs before, stay tuned, because I’ll be writing about that in the future.
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